Category: nfb

Web Accessibility Day is Tuesday, September 22 in Baltimore, Maryland, U.S.A. It’s a a one-day event teaching how to create web accessible content including PDFs and graphics, and how to use evaluation tools.

So instead of the National Federation of the Blind (NFB) having to sue the computer giant, Apple has agreed to make its dominant iTunes software accessible by next year. Here’s a link to the press release from the NFB:

Apple will make iTunes U (a dedicated area of the iTunes Store for content provided by colleges and universities) fully accessible by December 31, 2008, and will ensure the full accessibility of the iTunes software and the rest of the iTunes Store to blind people using both Mac and Windows operating systems by June 30, 2009.

Also, it seems that the iPod is not accessible. Only the newly released iPod Nano (generation 4) has accessibility features such as spoken menus and high contrast screens.

Big news! The NFB versus Target lawsuit is settled! As expected, there are good points and bad points to the settlement. You may read an excellent summary of the settlement by Jared Smith of WebAIM in the blog entry Target lawsuit settled. Some of the wins from the lawsuit are:

Target will pay NFB $90,000 for the certification and first year of monitoring and then $40,000 per year thereafter.

Target’s web developers will receive at least one day of accessibility training, to be provided by NFB at a cost of up to $15,000 per session.

Target will respond to accessibility complaints from web site users.

Target will pay damages of $6,000,000 to the class action claimants, or at most $7000 per claimant, and will pay $20,000 to the California Center for the Blind.

If you’re really interested, you may read the actual NFB vs. Target Settlement from the Northern District of California. (I find it ironic that the HTML title of this page doesn’t pass accessibility guidelines; it says “Untitled Document”.)

If you haven’t heard yet, Amazon.com stated that they are now committed to making improvements to web site accessibility. After Amazon.com has been singled out for its lack of web accessibility, let’s hope they can make up for it. The online retail giant will reportedly be working with the National Federation of the Blind (NFB) to make its web site more accessible.